On 23 February, there will be an interesting debate between Rowan Williams (the Archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Dawkins and Anthony Kenny on the issue of “The Nature of Human Beings and the Question of their Ultimate Origin”.
Time and venue: THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE, OXFORD, THURSDAY, 23 FEBRUARY 2012, 4.00-5.30PM (UK time).
Because of the huge amount of interest, it will also be broadcasted live on the internet.
For more information, go here: http://originsofnature.com/home.html.
Have you ever looked at the website of the Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net, and then I mean especially the store section: http://store.richarddawkins.net/? I recently noticed that “they” (I don’t presume Dawkins is selling stuff in person) sell jewelry. In itself there’s of course nothing wrong with that. But notice that The Richard Dawkins store sells jewelry in the form of DNA-strands, and Darwin’s sketch of the tree of life. These apparently are adopted as the symbols of the atheism that Dawkins is preaching. It’s interesting to see how science and symbolism here go hand in hand. But what is also interesting, is particular dynamics that is at work here. Creationism and Intelligent Design are taking evolutionary theory as a symbol for evil. Evolutionary theory symbolizes everything that in the eyes of creationists and ID-adherents is morally wrong in our contemporary society. Creationists and ID-people consider especially Darwin’s tree of life, representing common ancestry, a deeply problematic symbol. And now here you have Richard Dawkins who does exactly that: Dawkins takes DNA and Darwin’s idea of the tree of life, and turns them into – yes jewelry, I know, but also – symbols for atheism. Science, symbolism, and ideology are getting lumped together in the discourse of the new atheism. In my view a highly problematic combination and potentially dangerous because of its ideological undertones. Wacky stuff.
Recently, Richard Dawkins visited the Dutch university of Groningen for a public lecture. It was a major event, where eventually students sold (originally free) tickets for quite some money on the black market. Anyway, science journalist René Fransen, who works for the Groningen Universiteitskrant as well as for the Nederlands Dagblad did not get the chance to interview Dawkins. Instead, he asked scientists working at Groningen University what their opinion was about Richard Dawkins. I expected them to be enthusiastic about Dawkins’ qualities as a science popularizer. What I did not so much expect was the outright criticism of the scientists when it comes to Dawkins’ crusade against religion. Quite interesting.
http://uk.webhosting.rug.nl/archief/jaargang41/17/14c.php
A very interesting review in Chemical and Engineering News (of all places) of Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality. The review is a collaboration between a 46-year old father (a chemist) and his 7-year old son Max. Though the review is not completely devastating, the review does expose very nicely that Dawkins scolds at mythology where he shouldn’t and is sarcastic where he oughtn’t – and really that he really doesn’t know very well how and what children actually think…
http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i2/Deciphering-Magic-Reality.html
Recently, I came across a very interesting new perspective on the New Atheist movement – or rather, it’s a kind of eulogy written by R. Joseph Hoffman, a “non-believing” scholar in religious studies (he’s a historian of religion).
In his blog entry, “Re-Made in America: Remembering the New Atheism (2006-2011)”, Hoffman severely criticizes the New Atheists, and especially Richard Dawkins, for their fanatical rantings against religion.
Not only does Hoffman (rightly in my view) point out the blatant ignorance of the new atheists concerning what religion is and does – they actually construct stereotypes that they sell as being “true” religion – but Hoffman also argues that the New Atheist movement actually has had a damaging effect on the scholarly study of religion in the United States – and then I don’t mean theology, but religious studies.
Hoffman writes:
The real success story of the new atheism is that it was bought and sold after being intellectually panned by almost all the cognoscenti who weren’t atheist activists. In fact, as the circle closed around a tightly knit cadre of God-opposers, opposing God became virtually the sole criterion for what, in their parochial view, counted for anthropology, archaeology, sociology and the study of religion–about which all of the four (check the footnotes) were blissfully ignorant.
In other words, the New Atheists not only constructed a definition of religion, that is false yet widely accepted (almost canonical) among atheist communities worldwide, but they also implicitly have redefined the mission of all the scholarly approaches of religion: to be scientific means to scoff at religion, to debunk it as being an illusion, not only silly but perhaps even a menace to society. The consequences of this, Hoffman argues, are quite severe:
The willful ignorance of the new atheists matters because it makes almost impossible the work of serious religion scholars who have no commitment to belief, but who happen to feel that the study of religion belongs to and is inestimably important to the study of history and culture.
http://www.rjosephhoffmann.com/2012/01/01/re-made-in-america-remembering-the-new-atheism-2006-2011/
And do check out Hoffman’s other blog entries, there’s much more interesting stuff there!
(Picture credits: http://www.theatheistmama.com/2006/05/is-atheism-a-religion.html.)